Deniz Karasahin-Vortex Washbasin and a Complementary Tap

At Design Interviews

Interview with Deniz Karasahin : Frank Scott: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?. Deniz Karasahin : The main principle is very straight forward; this product exists because of the temporary need of creating and managing an accessible water flow in a dedicated space, so I wanted this product to signify its reason of existence, so the idea and the inspiration were naturally about fluids, fluid behaviors, drain and finally their combination vortex. .Frank Scott: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?. Deniz Karasahin : What I wanted to achieve was in fact rather unorthodox because my scenario was about an alien race or call it some intelligent life who has never seen anything like a conventional washbasin or has never seen anything like a washbasin somehow ends up at this planet and my goal was, using this life form’s universal understanding of physics to make him/her/etc. understand that this object was made to accompany something to do with fluids and drain. .Frank Scott: What are your future plans for this award winning design?. Deniz Karasahin : Well of course I want to see this design realized which means I want this design to be produced then I want to see it in nice stores and maybe in time I want to come across with it at a friend’s apartment, but these are not plans these are my expectations and hopes but my plans are focused on making at least some of them true. .Frank Scott: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?. Deniz Karasahin : Well the concept stage was a bit short but the CAD drawings and the fluid simulations, I mean learning to use the fluid simulation software plus working on it and adding the renders, it was about 3-4 weeks. .Frank Scott: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?. Deniz Karasahin : At the time I had an opportunity to have a meeting with a known company at this industry. I had roughly about a month before this meeting, but I had no experience at this particular field at the time. Instead of trying to convince this company that I was capable of designing at this field I decided to do a little bit of concept development so it would have been easier at the meeting. This is how I started this project and unfortunately the meeting never happened so I kept on working on the project myself because it was very intriguing. .Frank Scott: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?. Deniz Karasahin : As I said before it is not used by any company and I am open to suggestions regarding to selling or leasing the production rights of this product. .Frank Scott: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?. Deniz Karasahin : I started the project without looking at other designs I thought that seeing other approaches might influence my work, but once I had my concept I did make a lot of research about different approaches to the same design problem because I wanted to be sure that this was really an original approach to the field so instead of looking for influence or inspiration by other designers and designs I made myself sure that I wasn’t influenced and this approach wasn’t already thought before. .Frank Scott: Who is the target customer for his design?. Deniz Karasahin : This is a bit cliché isn’t it? At least for this specific situation, so I am going to say for aliens who have never seen a wash basin before. .Frank Scott: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?. Deniz Karasahin : The corner stone is Rhinoceros for all the 3D modeling and then Real Flow for fluid simulation and Maxwell Render for renders. .Frank Scott: What is the most unique aspect of your design?. Deniz Karasahin : I believe the most unique aspect is the strength of the concept because it is very easy to make sense of all the connections and the references plus as an object it looks so dominant in space. .Frank Scott: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?. Deniz Karasahin : I regularly get technical feedback from a couple of engineers who are specialized in the area to be sure what I thought was possible; was really possible.
.Frank Scott: What is the role of technology in this particular design?. Deniz Karasahin : Technology plays two decisive roles
First is for; making the molds and making sure all the little details of the form is accurate because the shape is too complicated for traditional means of mold making.
Second is for, the materials and the coatings without high-performance ceramics and nonstick glaze this proportions wouldn’t be possible.
.Frank Scott: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?. Deniz Karasahin : I used the fluid simulation tools for the placement of the tap by making sure the spiral path of draining water is what I wanted. .Frank Scott: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?. Deniz Karasahin : I am not very sure about telling this, but this is my first participation to a design competition. I had some personal arguments especially for competitions held by big companies when I was I student, so I never entered one. The really interesting part started when I moved to Paris at the time I was new to the city and some of our family friend’s invited me to a fortune telling evening event and I had nothing to do eventually I went there, so the long story short some woman whom I have never met before in my life insisted that I must participate to design competitions, and that was really the first time when I considered participating to a design competition. .